From: EfrtlssTns@aol.com Sent: Friday, May 31, 2002 11:26 PM To: jmargolies@tennisone.com Subject: Re: ET Keys & Bio Keys to Peak Performance KEYS TO PEAK PERFORMANCE My goal in 1974 was learning how to get and then stay “in the zone.” Twenty-eight years later it is still the focus of the program. Playing “in the zone” is the only place to play. Peak performance is playing “in the zone;” they are synonymous. I have designed my program as it is designed because these are the areas that need to be developed in order to get “in the zone.” We are not talking about mediocrity here, we are going for “the zone.” The program I have pieced together from many different sources is based on what I have perceived to be the Keys to Peak Performance, thirteen areas that lead a player to achieving his/her potential, both on and off the court. These are the areas that we all need to continue to work on for our whole lives. Many of these keys have been used by other teachers over the years, but many also take on new significance once competition has been removed from the learning process. The thirteen areas are: joy, relaxation, concentration, patience, perseverance, self-motivation, cellular memory, hand/eye coordination, stroke mechanics, footwork, rhythm, breathing, and confidence. These different areas are the learning modules that we are working on individually and collectively simultaneously. This is where the learning process gets challenging. There is a lot to get together. The good part is that whatever you want to learn, these keys will apply. Each of these areas has its own list of component parts that need to be mastered. If we needed to master only one of theses areas the difficulty factor would be much lower, but that is not the case. Individually, each module requires a lot of work, and when you combine all the modules, it takes years to integrate all the different elements. Each module is connected to all the other modules, and we will play our best only when they are all integrated. This is why getting to the point where we are able to play consistently “in the zone,” takes a long time and a lot of play. Excelling is easy, it just takes a long time. JOY The first of these keys or learning modules is joy. For a long time I have known that if we are to be successful, it is important to enjoy what we are doing. Over the last five years I have recognized that not only must we enjoy what we are doing, but what we are doing must make us joyful. Joy is essential for peak performance. So often in competition we get into associating joy with winning. We are joyful only after we have won the point, game, set, match, or championship. Most people are not experiencing joy, or any other positive emotion while they are playing. I have seen few competitors who were joyful while they were playing, and virtually none after they lost. What I am working on in Effortless Tennis is to, eventually, have players be able to experience joy as they are playing, and specifically while they are contacting the ball. The funny thing is that, because of the premature introduction of competition, few people are experiencing any positive emotion as they are contacting the ball. Competition has taken much of the joy out of the learning process and out of playing. It is time to put it back in. Getting people to feel joy while playing changes everything. Relaxation and performance levels improve immediately. What I see so often is people trying so hard to focus that it looks like a great strain. We’ve all been told over and over that we must be serious to excel, that if we are having too much fun we are goofing off. The thing we must be is focused, not serious. There is a huge difference. Everyone has experienced joy, maybe not as often as they would like, but everyone knows the feeling of joy. Not surprisingly, putting joy at the top of the peak performance list has brought a lot of joy to the program. People are having much more fun, even when they are not doing well, because I remind them that they are still learning the game, and they can’t expect to hit the ball perfectly every time. When I see people getting serious and upset with themselves I ask how their joy factor is. This is usually enough to get them to lighten up and have a better mental attitude when the next ball comes. For some people however, asking them about their joy factor makes them more uptight, but I will playfully continue to ask them about their emotional state, until they are able to lighten up. Tennis is, after all, just a recreational activity, so people shouldn’t get too upset. With no competition there is even less reason to get upset. Long-term, joy is essential for peak performance. Relaxation & Concentration For many years great teachers have been emphasizing the importance of concentration and relaxation in achieving peak performance. It is a standard in mental training. Today if we watch any professional sporting event it is as if there are only 3 reasons that people fail; they were not focused, not relaxed, or both. At the professional level all players have most of the physical skills mastered. Listen to the announcers on tv and you will here this, “that player tightened up,or that other player lost their focus.” During the track competition at the 2000 Summer Olympics this was the most frequent comment heard—and we know it must be important when someone is trying to run as fast as she/he can, and simultaneously she/he is relaxing. As Dan Millman noted, “Tension is not useful to the body.” Peak performance module number two is relaxation. Teachers are always telling their students to relax. “You’ve got to relax” they say, but the problem is that, if you have not mastered the skills necessary to be able to relax, then it is impossible to relax in a competitive situation. In competition it feels like we’ve always got to be “on guard.” It is hard to be relaxed and on guard at the same time. Even though everyone says that our ego and self worth aren’t on the line when we compete, it sure seems like they are. After the contest everyone asks, “who won?” We are supposed to win. Relaxing sounds simple, but under pressure it is very difficult to achieve, especially if you haven’t learned how to do it first in a non-competitive environment. I have been teaching the importance of relaxation for the last twenty-five years, but it was not until I removed competition from my program that I realized the enormity of its importance, and eventually how to achieve it. This is one of the most important findings of my research. It took two or three years after removing competition from the program to finally start seeing and feeling how truly relaxed we could be and still perform at our maximum ability. Actually, to this day, 9 years after I removed competition, I am still peeling away more layers in my relaxation. It feels so good. Because of previous experiences with prematurely getting into competition, the vast majority of people are incredibly uptight when they are performing. Without years of training where there is no competition, it is impossible to experience true relaxation in a competition. First we must know what complete relaxation feels like in a cooperative environment, because if we can’t relax when there is no pressure, we are not going to be able to relax when there is pressure. One of the places that it is easy to see if someone is relaxed while they are playing is to observe their facial expressions. If someone’s mouth is contorted, or their tongue is sticking out the side of their cheek, or all their neck muscles are bulging, they are not relaxed. Doing any of these things is not helping make the shot any better. This display of tightness is lowering performance. Because of everyone’s past experience with competition, it takes time for people to learn how to relax. The tricky part that I’ve found about getting people to relax, is that initially, when they relax, they tend to lose concentration. It is as if it is impossible to concentrate and relax simultaneously. Fortunately this is not the case; it is a matter of acquiring the skill of doing both simultaneously. It seems that people associate relaxing with not having to focus; this is one kind of relaxation, but as in meditation, the concentration we are talking about is a very relaxed state of attention. We are focused yet relaxed. There is a fine balancing line between focusing and relaxing. One of the interesting side effects of relaxation is that players are able to hit the ball with tremendous power, while being relaxed. They don’t have to tighten up and “muscle” the ball to get power. With good preparation and mechanics it is possible to hit powerful shots that feel “effortless.” We are using physics to hit the ball. When an object (the ball, weighing a few ounces) is moving toward us at x miles an hour and we put our whole body weight behind it, contacting it at the ideal contact point, at the ideal moment in time, that ball will fly back over the net with great pace. It feels like we have done nothing, yet the power is there. Effortless power. Peak performance module number 3 is concentration. Concentration is the ability to stay focused on what we need to focus on, no matter what is happening around us. Two of the clearest examples that demonstrate concentration come from observing cats and dogs. If we watch a cat as it tries to get a bird or a mouse, we see its focus is absolute. Nothing will distract it. Likewise with a dog that likes to chase balls. If it is waiting for someone to throw the ball, its complete attention is on that ball. The samurai warriors of ancient Japan also provide a good example of concentration. These men were trained to be excellent swordsman, and so their life was often on the line. This forced them to have laser like concentration. One moment of distraction, and they were dead. In whatever activity we are participating in, this is the level of concentration we must attain if we are to reach our potential. In tennis what we need to focus on is the little yellow tennis ball. No matter where it goes or what it is doing, we have to stay focused on it. Concentration is one of the hardest skills to master in tennis. Nobody can focus for us. There is no where else in our life that we have to have so much focus, on such a consistent basis, as we do on a tennis court. It is a mental skill and therefore there is nothing concrete to grab on to. Our minds like to wander from the past to the future, and the challenge is to learn how to stay focused in the present. As someone said, “the past is history, the future is a mystery, and today is a gift, that is why we call it the present.” Unfortunately the only moment we have any direct control over is the present. Once that ball hits off our racquet, it is gone and we can’t do anything about it. In tennis we develop our concentration by practicing the different strokes we need to master. While we are learning to master our strokes we are simultaneously developing our ability to stay focused. Here again, we must first be able to stay focused when there is no pressure, no competition, before we can hope to stay focused when there is pressure. Effortless Tennis is a great way to learn how to improve our concentration and stay focused in the present. After we hit the ball we have between one and four seconds to get ready for the next shot, there is no time to ponder what we just did, or what might happen next. We must stay focused on the ball to know exactly where it is going to land. This is one of the great aspects of the Effortless program. Learning the skill to be able to hit our shot and immediately be focused on the ball as it travels over the net. It is so easy to be analyzing our last shot, whether it felt great or horrible, but in that second or two that we are analyzing, we are not focused on the ball, so we don’t see what is happening. In the program I often talk about history and herstory. This is the idea that as soon as we hit a ball it is in the past. For men that shot is part of history, and for women it is herstory. No sexism here. Once that shot leaves our strings, we can’t do anything about it. Only in the present do we have any control over our shot. Even without competition, developing high levels of concentration is a long-term project. To stay focused on the ball as we run all over the court, and then have only a few seconds to get ready for the next shot, and the next, and the next, and the next, is a great challenge. We need to achieve a meditative state while we run around the court. Effortless Tennis is a moving meditation. Patience, Perseverance, & Self-motivation These three keys on the Peak Performance list are life skills that are important in getting anywhere, no matter what we want to learn or do. All three are challenging to acquire, but essential to achieving peak performance. The dictionary gives the definition of patience as, “an ability to suppress annoyance when confronted with delay.” Everyone has experienced this annoyance with delay on many occasions. Unfortunately, it seems that we have been taught to want everything now, no waiting—instant gratification. Too bad it doesn’t work that way very often. Patience isn’t just a virtue, it is a key to success. Some times things take longer to develop than we want them to, and we must have the patience to persevere. Perseverance is the ability to stay with something, even when things don’t seem to be going the way that we want. If we are to achieve high level goals though, we have to keep going even when we may want to stop. In a competitive based system, if someone is experiencing repeated failure, it is much easier to get discouraged and give up. One of the major discoveries that I have found from a non-competitive learning system is that there are these natural learning plateaus that everyone goes through, and that a competitive system does not allow us to progress through these plateaus at our own ‘individual’ pace. In a competitive system we must win—now. People are weeded out before they have a chance to develop, before they work through these plateaus. When we first start an activity we can feel like we are progressing more quickly, but then we get into that first learning plateau around the six month mark, and it doesn’t seem like we are improving as rapidly. When we first start playing, we do improve faster, but the longer we play, the longer it takes to see additional improvement. If people can stay with the game, then they will see that next jump in improvement at around the one year mark, for some it may take a little longer. After the one year mark then it will be approximately another year until someone will feel that next level of integration. No matter how much we work, it will still take about this time. The more we practice the better, but some of our improvement is just in the length of time we are involved with an activity; there is a lot of information to integrate and it can’t be rushed. Many people have trouble persevering through this first year, they feel like they want to see more improvement faster, but this is not how it works. Learning is cumulative. Everything we do eventually adds up. The next learning plateau is where we lose most people. That plateau occurs somewhere after the second year and can last anywhere from one to three years, depending on many different factors, mainly how much someone practices. If however, someone can keep with the game through this period, she/he will, after this next leap occurs, be able to feel confident with her/his skills, and enjoy her/his tennis for the rest of their lives. For someone like me who has been playing for so many years, the plateaus are a minimum of five years apart. I feel I am still improving, and every once in a while, I feel things go to another level. Mastery can occur sometime after the 10 year mark. The premature emphasis on competition doesn’t allow us to go through this natural learning progression. It seems like there are periods where we aren’t improving, but what is happening is that we are integrating the new information we have been learning into our cellular memory. If we don’t continue along the plateau we will never get to the next leap. This is where perseverance comes in. People can’t see and feel the improvement while they are on a plateau, but the work they are doing is essential in order to go to the next level. Once people understand the phenomenon of learning plateaus, it is easier to learn perseverance. The last of this set of learning modules, and from what I have seen, the most difficult for most people, is self-motivation. It is the key that separates success from failure. People will help encourage us along our journey, but in the end, if we wish to succeed, it is up to each of us to motivate ourselves. No one can force us to do anything. We have to be the ones to get ourselves to put in the time and do the practice. Excellence does not happen through luck or osmosis, it happens through self-motivation. Self-motivation is one of the areas that I stress with young people. If I can help them understand the importance of self-motivation and how to get started with it, they will do fine in life. Although still a formidable challenge no matter what, developing all three of these areas is made easier in a non-competitive environment. Since there is less pressure, people can take their time with the learning process, stay with the process when things don’t seem to be improving, develop the self-motivation to get out and do the work necessary to improve, and not get as easily discouraged. Cellular Memory I used to call this key, muscle memory, but decided that cellular memory is the better term. Cellular memory indicates that something is even more deeply ingrained into our being. We humans have two levels to us: on one level we are these amazingly complex beings who have the potential to speak many languages, produce great inventions and create wonderous works of art; on another level however, we are incredibly simple beings. Whatever we repeat over and over, patterns into our cells. This is much like a computer where whatever we put into it is what comes back out. In tennis, every time we swing the racquet and move our body, it leaves an imprint of that action in our cells. It is a chemical reaction that is taking place in our brain and body. Different chemicals react in different combinations to get our muscles to move. Every time that action is repeated it reinforces that chemical imprint. After a certain amount of repetition that action becomes a habit that will repeat automatically. Our body starts doing the movement for us; we don’t have to think about it any more, it just happens. This is why it is so important, from the beginning of our involvement in any activity, to program efficient movements into our cellular memory. Once a habit is formed, it is difficult to make changes and adjustments, because now it is part of our cells; the learning process is made significantly harder. As all of us have found out, unlearning something is much harder than learning it right from the start. A vast majority of the people I have worked with, mostly the adults, have had problems with what they had ingrained into their cellular memories; these memories were limiting their development. Some of these people had problems with the physical aspects, while others suffered from mental, and emotional difficulties. Usually, because they are so intertwined, it is all three areas. Cellular memory also has mental and emotional components. If someone experiences anxiety, uncertainty, or fear when they are playing, that reaction is also recorded in their cellular memory. If these emotional reactions are repeated during subsequent play, under similar circumstances, eventually that same emotional reaction is triggered automatically. It is difficult to hit good shots when we are anxious or fearful, especially when that response is happening without our control. Each time another situation comes up where this response happens, it gets burned more deeply into the cellular memory. After a while people get uptight just thinking about a potential situation like the ones that have negatively affected them before. This then leads to avoidance of these type of situations. Most teachers and students do not understand the overwhelming importance of cellular memory in the learning process. Teaching pros feel that it is ok to let players swing any way they want to, any way that feels natural. I do not wish to stifle anyone’s individual creativity, but from what I have seen, when players have little time to react, they make up movements that are more desperation, than natural. Once these movements are repeated and patterned in, they are part of us, and they will come out under pressure. Teaching efficient technique is essential to peak performance. Reprogramming old habits is difficult, if not impossible to do in competition because the need to win is paramount. We can learn how to redo less than efficient old habits only in a cooperative learning environment. People with mild to severe learning problems can begin to change to the point where they are able to start learning much more efficiently, and begin making leaps in their development. The non-competitive system allows us to be able to change our cellular memory, both physically, mentally, and emotionally. We need to start this approach from our earliest days of learning so that these negative responses, which I have experienced frequently myself, and I have seen in most adults, can be prevented from happening to our children. The good news is that just as bad, or as I like to say “less than optimal” habits are hard to change, so are good ones. We have the ability to ingrain whatever we want. If we pattern efficient movements and positive emotions into our cellular memory from the very beginning, they will be there when we have no time to think, and we will react with what works. Understanding and appreciating that physical, mental, and emotional cellular memory is a powerful learning tool is central to being able to achieve our potential and get consistently “in the zone.” Hand/Eye Coordination To be a good tennis player takes incredible hand/eye coordination. We have to track, move to, and intercept a small, fast moving object, all within a few seconds. There are few situations in our lives where we have to react as fast as we do in tennis. Initially, no one has the reflexes or concentration needed to react fast enough to hit the ball consistently into the court. It has been assumed that hand/eye coordination was something we either had or we didn’t; for some people it does come more naturally, but most people have to learn to track the ball. It is a skill everyone can acquire. If you don’t have highly developed hand/eye coordination, getting into competition will only exacerbate the problem. If you can’t hit the ball in the center of the racquet most of the time, you should not be competing. For as long as I can remember, I have always had great hand/eye coordination. In the process of writing this paper I remembered one event from my childhood that helped me understand why I had this skill. My dad put down a load of small stones along the path that we drove up to our mailbox. I was less than ten at the time. One day I went over and used these stones for batting practice. The bat was about 2 feet long and had a circumference of barely more than one inch; the stones were small also, the biggest of which were about the size of a nickel. I spent hours trying to hit those stones. If I didn’t really watch the stone, and know where my bat was, I would miss. At first I missed a lot, but then I started getting the feeling of what I needed to do, and I started making contact much more frequently. My great hand/eye coordination, was not some gift I possessed, but something I had worked at to create. I was just playing, but I was also learning how to track a moving object. At some point tracking the ball became part of my cellular memory. This is the same reason that people like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods do so well; yes they are very naturally talented, but they practiced a lot when they were young. It’s not magic. Hand/eye coordination is a learned skill that everyone can acquire eventually. It will take some people longer than others, but I have seen no one that kept practicing that didn’t learn how to track the ball sufficiently to succeed. Keeping our eye focused on the ball is really a matter of keeping our mind focused on the ball. So this goes back to key number 3, concentration. It is our mind that leaves the ball, thereby turning off the connection to our eyes. The old saying, “you can’t hit what you can’t see” is applicable here. When players are immediately thrown into competition they do not have the level of hand/eye coordination needed to sustain a rally, let alone win a match. We can’t expect people to come out on the court and start competing, if they can’t track a fast moving object. This is where everyone starts to tighten up around performance; not being able to track the ball increases the number of unforced errors people commit, which then decreases performance. At a certain point, taking their eye off the ball just before contact becomes part of their cellular memory. In the nurturing confines of Effortless Tennis, players are able to increase their hand/eye coordination and reaction time profoundly over the course of time, and also undo old cellular memory that had them not tracking the ball. Eventually we can track the ball without having to think about it. Stroke Mechanics & Footwork There are dozens of different ways we can swing the racquet and move our feet to get to the ball. If we look at the pros, we see many different styles of hitting and moving. The thing is that unless someone plans to practice as much as the pros, they should not expect to be able to move and hit the ball like the pros. The only reason the pros can move and hit the way they do is because they have been practicing six hours a day over at least the last ten years of their lives. They are not getting out for an hour or two once a week. Even though there are many ways to hit the ball and move our feet, there are more or less efficient ways to hit and move. On many balls that we have to hit, there are fractions of seconds between success and failure. We need efficient movements to be able to react quickly enough on these fast moving balls. Developing more efficient strokes and footwork is something we work on for as long as we play the game. Over the years we will continue to shave a few fractions of seconds off of what we are doing. In premature competition, because players haven’t learned the movements and reactions necessary to execute the shots, they ingrain less than efficient stroke and footwork patterns into their cellular memory, thereby limiting how quickly they can react and move. Everything is happening so fast that we don’t have time to think, we are just trying to survive. Again I must reiterate, reprograming less than efficient stroking and footwork patterns is virtually impossible to accomplish in competition, because, what is most deeply programmed into the cells is what will come out every time under pressure. In a non-competitive environment players are able to take the time to develop their strokes and footwork so that the patterns that they ingrain are efficient and effortless. Just as there are most efficient stroking patterns there are also most efficient footwork patterns. We can position our feet in many different ways, but some ways will work better than others to provide us with the best opportunity to hit our best shot, and these are the positions we want to pattern into our cellular memory. Any time we are playing we want to take as few steps as necessary, because this saves energy, and after we have been playing for an hour or more, those extra steps will take their toll on our stamina. At the higher levels of the game players don’t have time to take even one extra step; on certain shots, one extra step will make it impossible to get to the next shot. Over the course of our involvement with the game, we need to continue to refine our footwork, it is another long-term project. Tennis is a spontaneous, improvisational dance. We are dancing, but until the person hits the ball, we never know where we are going. Another aspect of footwork is weight transfer. In order to hit a solid shot it is necessary to transfer our weight into the ball, from our back foot to our front foot, at the ideal contact point, and at the ideal moment in time. Weight transfer provides us with a powerful shot without having to muscle the ball to generate that power. However we move to the ball, when we are in the process of striking the ball, it is optimal for our weight to be transferring forward toward the ball. Because we must move our feet so quickly when we are hitting with someone, it is easy to feel like we have lazy footwork. This is actually just something that we have to gradually “get up to speed.” Getting to the ball is the first thing we need to do, being able to transfer our weight into the shot comes later, but to hit our best shot, it must happen. Rhythm There is a rhythm to playing anything. We need good rhythm to be a good tennis player. First we need to find and develop our own rhythm, then we can learn how to develop rhythm with another player. Developing our own rhythm is a long term project . When we start competing too quickly, we don’t develop a secure rhythm of our own, and this creates uncertainty in us. Unfortunately, in a competition the goal is to do everything to keep opponents “off their rhythm.” We don’t want them to get their rhythm because this means that they are going to play well. No matter what most people say, they don’t what the other player to play his/her best. People want their opponents to play their best only if they still win, otherwise they are doing everything they can to not let them play their best—to not let them find their rhythm. In the Effortless program, since we are trying to sustain the rally, we are developing our own rhythm while we are learning how to be in rhythm with another player. It is great fun to get into a good rhythm with another player. In this environment you want your partner to hit great shots. To get “into the zone,” and play to our potential, we need to be “in rhythm.” Good rhythm means good timing, and as the saying goes, “timing is everything.” It is true. There are many moments when we can contact the ball, but there is one ideal moment in time to hit each shot. The closer we get to that moment, the better our shot. A tenth of a second is a long time in tennis, and sometimes when we are off by that little fraction of time, it is too much. Just as we do not want to be late when hitting a shot, we don’t want to be early either—there is that one perfect moment. To generate maximum velocity with minimum expenditure of energy requires contacting the ball at that one moment when the ball is at the ideal contact point. As people’s skills develop, they are better able to see and stay focused on the ball so that they are better able to time when to hit the shot. Timing is interrelated with hand/eye coordination and concentration. To be able to contact the ball at the ideal moment in time, you must be able to track the ball and stay focused on the ball simultaneously. In competition everything is happening so fast that it is impossible to learn the proper timing. We are always rushed and many times we end up being late. If we can first learn what it feels like to hit the ball at the ideal time without any pressure, then we can transfer that skill to higher pressure situations in the future. If we can’t hit the ball at the ideal moment when there is no competition, we can’t expect that miraculously we will somehow time it perfectly in competition. If that happens, it is called luck. Breathing The art of breathing is the difference between playing well, and being “in the zone.” The skill of breathing while playing is often overlooked by most players and many coaches. First off, regulating our breathing allows for more efficient use of our energy. Most people hold their breath when they are hitting the ball. They are so busy trying to hit the ball that they forget to breathe until they are gasping for air. Holding our breath at contact means we are tightening too many muscles as we are hitting the ball. It seems like tightening our muscles would create more power, but what happens actually is that the tightening decelerates the racquet thereby diminishing our power. One of the things that most of us do while we are playing, is run more energy through our system than we need to in order to perform our best. We are using more energy than necessary. I believe that this is also a result of the competitive learning system; we are running too much energy because it seems like we don’t have enough time, and we are nervous about not doing well. Nervousness wastes energy. Breathing helps save energy. Over the last fifteen years or so exhaling on contact has been championed by many of the mental training experts in the game. They would usually recommend a forceful blowing out of the breath. This is when we hear players grunting as they hit the ball. Exhaling on contact is very important for timing and concentration, but ideally it should be a very soft exhale that enables our shoulders, arms, neck, and face to relax. When we exhale, our upper body naturally relaxes. To illustrate the softness we want on the exhale, I like to use the analogy of seeing the tennis ball as a cupcake that has one candle on it. We want to blow out that candle, and because it is just one candle, it doesn’t take much breath to extinguish it. If someone is breathing out too forcefully it is an indication of too much tension. The new piece of the puzzle on breathing from Effortless Tennis is learning to start inhaling at the moment our partner, formerly adversary, contacts the ball. Precisely when our partner contacts the ball we start a nice, soft inhale as we move to the ball. We continue to inhale until we softly exhale as we contact the ball. The exhale happens precisely at the moment of contact, not just before or just after. The exhale continues until our partner again contacts the ball, when we again begin to inhale. Getting into this breathing pattern allows us to enter “the zone.” It puts us into a meditative state that allows our body to do what we have to, without having to “think” about what we are doing. We are now playing “out of our minds.” The skill of breathing is also interrelated to our relaxation, concentration, hand/eye coordination, and timing. Breathing enables us to relax our muscles further, keep ourselves focused on the ball better, and also improve our timing. Having these previous skills developed allows us the freedom to just breathe. In the end that is what it gets down to, breathing. We inhale, we exhale, we hit great shots, and we have fun. Confidence Confidence is the final key to peak performance. Everyone knows we need confidence if we are to be good at something, but it seems as if, in this society, we are supposed to have confidence in what we are doing, even before we know how to do what we are doing. I don’t see how it works like that. If we are not sure we are going to be able to get to the ball and hit it back in the court, we are decreasing our chances of making the shot. Confidence does not come from some false bravado, but from an internal knowing that we have the skills necessary to be successful. The competitive system promotes “faking” confidence so that we can fool our opponent, and hopefully ourselves, into thinking that we are better than them; this will lower their self-confidence, increase their self-doubt and improve our chances of winning. This only works up until the other person has the necessary ability and can call our bluff. For the long-term, faking confidence doesn’t work. It is hard to develop secure confidence while learning in a competitive learning system, because there is always another contest—even if we won the last one, there is someone still wanting to beat us. If we know “inside” that we don’t have the skills, or aren’t certain that we have the skills, our confidence will be tentative. This whole process started when we were very young. Our coaches, teachers and parents told us to be confident, “you’ve got to be confident” they said,but even as little kids we knew, on some level, that we couldn’t be confident because we weren’t sure what we were supposed to be doing. When you don’t know what you are doing, it is impossible to be confident. So telling someone who has lost many times to be confident, is only further lowering her/his confidence. Looking back on my competitive playing career I had serious confidence problems, and I did pretty well in competition. Now I understand why my confidence was not strong, I should not have been playing competition—I hadn’t mastered the fundamentals. If we do not have a deep inner confidence in our skills, we are not going to be able to perform well under pressure. In the non-competitive Effortless system, as we develop the other 12 keys to peak performance, our confidence will get stronger and continue to grow. Confidence is the end product of developing the skills—it is not where we start. Only a fool is confident when he isn’t sure he knows what he is doing. It takes a lot of time and work to develop true confidence. Confidence comes from doing the work and knowing that we know what we are doing.